It takes me 20 hours or more to make a traditional hand stitched knife pleated kilt. When I started as an apprentice, it took much longer. I was taught to do it right, work carefully, make tiny invisible stitches, and match the tartan perfectly. It's important to me, even though it takes time. Now, after several years, it's second nature and goes smoothly, thus a little faster.

I hear that some people can make a hand stitched kilt in only ten hours, but I don't know how that's humanly possible.

I tried making a child's kilt with a sewing machine. but it was much harder to perfectly line up the tartan stripes on the felling, and very frustrating. I re-did the pleat sewing over and over, and came to the conclusion that hand stitching is faster and better for me, because I can get it perfectly by hand.